Shining Force 3 translations?

[knight0fdragon]

I feel that it should be time for somebody to create some kind of patch for this game since the possibitiets of sega translating it for us are slim to none. I am hoping to use this forum for people to post information that they can find out from reverse enginneering these games so that someone can use this information to create the patch, since it is very hard for me to do all of the work it would be nice to get some community effort. Please keep in mind I have no idea on how to start a translation for satur games but with as much info as possible I am sure it could get done. Some useful information would be
1) What are the file type on the disk for?
2) How, if any, is the text encoded/compressed/whatever.
3) Does ISOs/ Cue & Bin CD images have CRC checking on them, or can i just change a byte in the file to change anything else
4) Any ideas on a good saturn compiler / decompiler to make this stuff happen

Also where are our japanese friends to translate the rest of this game to allow for a complete translation.

On a seperate note, if anyone has the japanese version of SF1 and wish to also help please IM me at Knight0fDragon on AIM

[Cullsoft]

Don't think that this hasn't been brought up before, and that it hasn't been considered already. Because it has, and it's just not feasible at present.

Saturn emulation is still at a "work in devlopment" stage. Although the Giri Giri emualtor can play most games, hacking into the games themselves is just as tricky. So questions (1) and (2) are pretty much answered as "who knows?". I'm no emualtion engineer or the like myself, but from what those with a better knowledge have said over the years, doing something like this isn't going to be happening anytime in the near future.

Plus I think you're over-estimating what the community's capable of. To my knwoledge there are NO Japanese members here (and if there are, they haven't made it openly public and/or don't frequent here). And the translators have lives of the ir own, you know... you can't just hand them two games entirely in Japanese and say "I want English copies, pronto"; it's taken them YEARS to get as far now. And unless you're willing to pay them in any way, they've no entitlement to put their lives out of the way to work on what is, even for those with decent Japanese learning, one pain in the arse of a job.

If you can get somewhere proper with the task, then more power to you. But treating it with an attitude of "this should be done by now, it ought to be a straightforward job" is only going to land you in trouble.

[knight0fdragon]

well buddy I guess you are misreading me, we have come so far in wth translaions as it is, im asking that we go all the way, and also I know it is difficult, but I have seen patches done on saturn ISOs, that is why I am asking for all knowledge to be collected on this subject, so that it will be easier for those trying to accomplish this task like myself. I never said pronto, then again I do not see any open information about this either, so I am asking the community to come together and let us do what sega has not.

[Special T]

What games have you seen a patch for? I've heard of games being partcial translated but only menu's and stuff, i'd be glad to help but not to sure what i can do to help?

[knight0fdragon]

langrisser 3 and blue seed have partial translations, and basically a collection of knowledge is all that is really being requested, since every1 for some reason likes to keep things low key. Right now what I am doing is trying to figure out what the files in the game are used for, this way I can at least breakdown where the text is located at, but pretty much if you see anything that might be of some help into solving this issue, then by all means post. If there is enough knowledge out there someone is bound to figure out how to patch it.
As for some information that I have found, http://www.helsinki.fi/~ammonton/sega/docs.html has a file called VCDtool which apparently makes ISOs for saturn, so I will test this file out in a little bit to see if i can rebuild a SF3 cd

[Special T]

best of luck to you, when i go home i will check the net and see what i can find.

[knight0fdragon]

Thats great, the thing that would be the most help now is a japanese version of scenerio 1, this way I can eliminate some of the files that are exactly the same for both versions

[StoneTheRock]

Me and some friends that have quite some knowledge on the area of hacking and making saturn games/programs have long ago studied the chance of a patch being released but we've gone nowhere. Believe me, what you're trying to do has been tried by many of the best and none have succedded.

Still, I am happy that people are still trying to get this done and hope that you wil succeed in your task. You can easily find a copy of a Japanese scenario 1 in a very famous peer-to-peer program. It's the one where you pin the e-tail...

[knight0fdragon]

you would think so but ive been sitting at 97% for weeks now and the other is at 3% going nowhere, if you have info please share because someone is bound to learn from it

[StoneTheRock]

I have little help to offer as my work was mainly getting the little things done and helping with the translation. However I when I get a chance I'll ask an aquaintance who is an emminent saturn coder what he thinks of such a project. I believe he also had his hands on on a SFIII translation project but it whent nowhere...

[jakester]

If it were possible it would be a feat indeed, the stuff of legend!
I would certainly be worth trying, even just for the fact that if you were successful, Sods law would dictate that sega would announce they had done it themselves, the day you finished it!

[Rune]

From previous discussions, the only relevant information I remember is that shining games have a tendency to have a real tricky compression method for their text.

[Special T]

One thing i think is discouraging me is that the SF final conflict was never translated and it was for the game gear and lots of GB and GG games were translated but due to the tricky compression methods used it has yet to be translated, now for SF3 and it being CD based i would think it would be a more complex but not impossible if you get the right people and enough time im sure it can be done but im thinking it will take time and a lot of knowledge which i am personally lacking the know how. but again good luck

[knight0fdragon]

Thanks, I've taken classes in compression and encryption, though it may not be the same ones or anything the concept is still there, so if I find a way to decompress it I will gladly share it on here, and I hope others do the same. The hardest part right now is FINDING where all the text is stored, if not in multiple files

on a seperate note i tried using that cd compiler, boy its hard, any1 know where to find good documentation on it?

[Special T]

I was wondering if you've made any progress with your project yet, i am very eager to find out if the impossible will be possible??? I was also currious to find out something else as well you said that you were taking classes on compression and Sf fC uses unusual compression methods i was wondering if you think you could work your magic on that as well to me the game gear vesion would seem an easier feat to accomplish than SF3, although i would much rather see SF3 in english and FC, but i was just courious anyways.

[knight0fdragon]

Unfortunatly I am still trying to find where text is located, thats the part thats a real pain in the @$$, I have a feeling I know what some of the file types are, but since the school semester is coming to an end I haven't had a lot of time to devote to it. The good thing about SF3 is that it has standard characters like ABC as well as the japanese ones, so they do not have to be drawn in, I believe that the game gear game has to be drawn in, which really shouldnt be too much of a problem, just the compression of course, and reverse enginneering that is hard, especially if the compression algorithm is unknown. If anyone has info on the game gear compression please inform me this way I could look at that also. Chances are they are dictionary type compressions if its compression at all. Maybe its just encryption since SF3 only takes about 200 megs on a cd, maybe compression wasnt needed, who knows.

[Lid230]

I dont know anything baout translating a game and u prbably alread know all this stuff but theres some info on the sega extreme forums about other translation projects so maybe the people on here may be able to help.
Sega Extreme Forums
Sega Extreme Forums
these may not be helpful but i thought it was worth mentioning incase it helps ur prject as i would love to play a patched version of SF with english text:)
Good Luck

[knight0fdragon]

Thanks I'll take a look at this stuff also, some of the stuff on here seems to require things like changing the text graphics, but in SF3 all of the appropriate characters(as in letters numbers etc) are there, so the simplest form of a translation would be to just change the address of where the characters are pointing to (providing that the japanese to english is a 1:1 ratio, which is highly doubtful), this is a good place to start, but unfortunatly, I still cannot find this spot on the disk. Since vacation is approaching, I will have more time to do research on this subject

[Lid230]

Well it might be worth putting a post on the forums there, cos there are some pretty clever people there who might be able to help u out. So id leave a message there saying what u r thinking of doing an if any1 can help.

[knight0fdragon]

well for some strange reason I cannot register to this site
... nevermind I just added fake information and apparently that worked